Features new to Windows Vista

Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are very numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including additional management features, new aspects of security and safety, new I/O technologies, new networking features, and new technical features. Windows Vista also removed some others.

Windows Shell and user interface

Windows Aero

Windows Vista introduces a redesigned user interface and visual style named Windows Aero (a backronym for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open) that is intended to be aesthetically pleasing and cleaner than previous versions of Windows, with features such as glass translucencies, light effects, live thumbnails, and window animations enabled by the new Desktop Window Manager. Windows Aero also encompasses a new default typeface (Segoe UI)—set at a larger size than the default font of previous versions of Windows—new mouse cursors and new sounds, new dialog box, pop-up notification, and wizard interfaces, and revisions to the tone and phrasing of messages throughout the operating system. Windows Aero is available in the Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate Windows Vista editions.

All editions of Windows Vista include a new "Windows Vista Basic" theme with updated visuals; it is equivalent to Luna of Windows XP in that it does not rely on a compositing window manager. Glass translucencies, light effects, live thumbnails, or window animations of Windows Aero is not available. Windows Vista Home Basic additionally includes a unique "Windows Vista Standard" theme, which has the same hardware requirements of Windows Aero, but it does not include glass translucency or live thumbnail features or effects.

Start menu

The Start menu has undergone a significant revision in Windows Vista, and it is updated in accordance with Windows Aero design principles, featuring glass translucencies and subtle light effects while Windows Aero is enabled. The user's profile photo is present above the right column, and hovering over an item in the right column replaces the user's profile photo with a dynamically changing icon to reflect the item that will be opened. The right column of the Start menu no longer shows icons for items, and the layout of items in this column has changed from Windows XP; the "Printers" and "Run..." commands are removed by default. "All Programs" is no longer a cascading listing of applications and folders; instead, applications and folders appear within a scrollable tree view list. The most significant change to the Start menu is the addition of a ''Start Search'' box that allows users to incrementally search for file names, file contents, and metadata, and which also functions as an application launcher. The power button now transitions to sleep mode by default.

Like Windows XP, Windows Vista also allows users to revert to the classic Start menu introduced in Windows 95.

Windows Explorer

Arrangement and visualization

The leftward Task Pane of Windows XP has been replaced by an upward Command Bar that provides the same contextual tasks and file operation commands. The Navigation Pane can now be enabled with these commands and tasks always available; in Windows XP, it was necessary to switch between the Navigation Pane and the Task Pane — both were not available simultaneously. The Navigation Pane itself has been updated to host optional Favorite Links. The menu bar is hidden by default, but it can be displayed with the key. The address bar has been modified to present a breadcrumbs view, which shows the full path to the current location; clicking any location in the breadcrumb hierarchy navigates to that location, which eliminates the need to go back multiple times or up multiple directories—the Up button is removed accordingly. It is also possible to navigate to any subfolder of any parent folder of the current hierarchy by using the arrow between folders. When files are grouped, clicking the group header selects all items under that group. Multiple groups of files can also be selected by clicking the group headers while holding down .

File operations

When copying or moving files, Windows Explorer displays the destination path and the source path, the number of items being transferred, and the transfer speed of items as megabytes per second (MB/s). Conflicts do not terminate file operations. If a conflict occurs with only one file, the user will be presented options for resolution. If a conflict occurs with multiple files, the user can apply a single resolution to every file to avoid conflicts with other files in the operation. If two or more files have the same name, for example, an option is available to rename the source file while retaining both the destination and the source files is available; in previous versions of Windows, the only options were to either replace the destination file or cancel the process. Rename operations for multiple files are facilitated with a new keyboard shortcut that automatically brings the next downward file into focus after another file is renamed; pressing and together brings the next upward file into focus. If an external data storage device is accidentally removed while copying or moving files to it, the user can retry the operation without restarting that file copy operation from the beginning; this gives the user an option to reconnect that external data storage device without data loss.

If a file is in use by another application during a deletion, move, or rename operation, Windows Explorer introduces a new IFileIsInUse API that allows developers to inform the user of the application that is using the file, with options to close the application, switch to it to finish working on the file, or to terminate its open handle on the file.

Icons

Icons in Windows Vista are visually more realistic than illustrative. Icons are scalable in size up to 256 × 256 pixels. Required icon sizes are , , and ; optional sizes are , , , , and . Icons now display thumbnails depicting the actual contents of files. New media overlays are available for photo, track, and video thumbnails, which are now distinguished by an overlay of the icon of the application assigned as the default for the respective file types. File icon viewing modes are Extra Large, Large, Medium, Small, List, Details, and Tiles. It is possible to transition between icon viewing modes with an incremental slider or by holding down the key and scrolling with the mouse scroll wheel. To reduce the size of large icons, icons may be stored as compressed PNGs; to maintain backward compatibility with earlier versions of Windows, only larger sized icons can use lossless PNG.

Metadata and organization

Windows Explorer in Windows Vista introduces significant changes from previous versions of Windows for organization and visualization of items. Column header controls are available in all icon viewing modes in Windows Explorer — not just Details view as in Windows XP and earlier — and provide enhanced filtering, grouping, and sorting capabilities. Windows Explorer also sorts files on-the-fly automatically as they are renamed or pasted. New organizational capabilities enabled by the Windows Search Index and platform include ''Stacks'', which are collections of items assembled by a common property, and '' Saved Searches'', which expose items to users based on metadata instead of folders or folder hierarchies; these features were originally intended to be provided by WinFS.

The new ''Details Pane'' allows users to add or change metadata such as ''Author'' or ''Title'' in items directly from within Windows Explorer without requiring them to open the application that created the item or to open a separate dialog box. Many more properties are exposed to the Windows Shell in Windows Vista than in Windows XP. For instance, it is now possible to query for photos based on types of camera flashes or whether a camera flash was used at all. Windows Vista includes inbox support for Microsoft Office documents and other types of items; support for metadata belonging to new types or other unrecognized types can be added by writing ''Property Handlers'' for the types. Unlike previous versions of Windows, all metadata is stored within items in Windows Vista to ensure that it is not lost when items are copied to a CD-ROM, moved across machines or partitions, or sent as attachments in a message.

Sharing

Individual files in Windows Vista can be shared; previously, it was only possible to designate a folder as a share and set permissions on individual files and folders. A Share button on the new Command Bar appears when selecting both files and folders — in Windows XP, the equivalent command on the Task Pane only appeared when a folder was selected — and there is now a context menu option to share files when a file is selected.

Windows Vista introduces a new Sharing Wizard that displays users and groups with whom the current user can share; sharers can select local sharees on the current PC or those from Active Directory, a Windows domain, or workgroup when the sharer's PC is registered with a domain controller. The Sharing Wizard additionally includes an option that automatically composes an email with a hyperlink to the shared resource embedded in the message so the recipient can easily access the file or folder.

There are new columns in Windows Explorer that indicate whether an item is shared and the sharees with whom an item is shared; users can arrange and search for items based on these details. Because it can be difficult to locate or recall each file or folder that is being shared, and with whom these resources are shared, Windows Vista includes a Saved Search dedicated to sharing that displays the files and folders directly shared out by the current user.

Windows Search

Windows Vista introduces a Windows Search Index and platform that supersedes both the Indexing Service and Windows Desktop Search to unify platform search and to provide enhanced capabilities and greater rapidity of results; it was developed after the postponement of WinFS and introduces features originally touted as benefits of that platform, such as content indexing, incremental searching, and property stacking. Windows Search appears in the Common Item Dialog (Open/Save dialog boxes), the Control Panel, the Start menu, in various applications, and in Windows Explorer. Windows Search by default indexes user profiles (excluding AppData). Windows Search uses '' IFilters'' — the same interface used by Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint, and SQL Server — to extract, index, and scan file format contents; it similarly uses ''Property Handlers'' to read and modify properties. For non-indexed queries, Windows Search in Windows Vista uses the same IFilters that are used for indexing, which offers more consistent results between indexed and non-indexed searches, as well as the ability of non-indexed queries to discover and display results for contents and properties — a feature that was unavailable in previous versions of Windows.

Windows Search uses a default query syntax referred to as the Advanced Query Syntax (AQS), which features boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to disambiguate the parameters of queries for contents, files, items, and properties; an advanced search interface for building queries in place of AQS is available. With Windows Vista, Windows Search also includes an optional natural language search syntax called Natural Query Syntax (NQS) that enables queries such as "documents modified today", "e-mail from holly sent this week", "music by Mozart", and "videos of family created December 2007". Additionally, Windows Search SQL Syntax, which enables developers to issue SQL clauses and statements for queries is fully supported in Windows Vista.

When users create a Saved Search in Windows Vista, they can optionally reuse previous search results; when results of the previously Saved Search change, all Saved Searches that match the criteria will display new results.

Windows Sidebar

Windows Sidebar is an interface that hosts Microsoft Gadgets, which are small applications designed for a particular purpose. Windows Sidebar is positioned rightward on the desktop, though users can place it leftward or detach gadgets to the desktop. Windows Vista includes ''Calendar'', ''Clock'', ''Contacts'', ''CPU Meter'', ''Currency Conversion'', ''Feed Headlines'', ''Notes'', ''Picture Puzzle'', ''Slide Show'', ''Stocks'', and ''Weather'' gadgets. Microsoft hosted a Web gallery for users to download and install additional gadgets.

Gadgets are written with a combination of DHTML, JScript, and VBScript, and are individually packaged as GADGET files. A single gadget on the Windows Sidebar can also optionally be hosted at Windows Live or on Windows SideShow devices.

''Live File System'' (UDF Packet Writing)

Windows Vista introduced native support for packet writing on optical media, using the Universal Disk Format (UDF) file system. This feature, known as ''Live File System'', makes writeable optical media act like flash storage by allowing users to incrementally add, modify, move and delete files on recordable and rewriteable optical media such as CD-R, CD-RW, DVD±R, DVD±RW, BD-R and BD-RE.

While the preceding Windows XP only supported reading UDF versions of up to 2.01 inside Windows Explorer, and relied on third-party software such as ''InCD